Recalling someone's experience this year with a Lowe's manager who couldn't be bothered with the 'scratch-and-dent' flowers and just tossed them, I got me an idea: the above experience suggested those managers had some leeway in how they dispensed with those flowers, so I asked my local Lowe's gardening dept manager and he indicated so long as the managers don't GIVE AWAY plants to the customers, they pretty much had freedom to dispense with those plants as they pleased.
Lucky for me, my manager was lke me, couldn't bear to toss live and full-of-potential plants into the dumpster. So I made a couple offers, he suggested even less, (because, he confessed, he just wanted them OUT!) and I ended up backing my truck up to the garden department and pretty nearly emptying the place. All the distressed perennials I wanted for .50 a piece was the final price we settled on. I took lots of coneflowers and asters and a few speedwells, campanulas, tickseeds, salvias, and a couple annuals (black and blue salvias and big red New Guinea Impatiens) tossed in with a view to making up at least one planter full of nice annuals to winter over. WOO-HOO!
So, after I sleep off the fibro burn-out for a couple of days, from all the effort loading, unloading, trimming, deadheading and watering and pep-talking the newcomers--wonderful fun, but even fun is a form of stress, and now I'm paying for it-ow! I am going to have such fun planting these AND sharing!
I had a good girlfriend just move into an area simply STIFF with deer bristling with chutzpa with attitude, and happily, lots of the plants I brought home are deer-resistent, and I have yet to get her a really good house-warming gift, SO! Perfect fit.
So I encourage you fellow DGers: don't be afraid to dicker with the garden dept managers if you see a whole lot of roughed up plants you'd really like to take home. At gthe worst they could say no and we can cope with a no can't we? But they just might surprise you and make your day and your garden next year!
Melis, giddy and wading in flowerpots
crappy flower blow-out at Lowe's
Wow, you GO, girl!!! Lucky friend of yours--she will be thrilled!
Very true. Good going! :) They will also give you the trays that the pots come in.
Home depot and Lowe's will sell broken bags of mulch at a discount, too. We've gotten it for as low as 50-cents/bag at Lowe's and $4 for a whole palette at Home Depot!
re:mulch: just drove home with my second load of the stuff this year. God bless clumsy forklift drivers! If it weren't for them I'd never get any mulch.
Melis
This message was edited Sep 16, 2008 8:12 PM
i have had very good luck with plants i buy at Lowes!
Vicki
yes. I don't think they deliberately rough them up, only sometimes things fall and people knock things about without meaning to. Usually the people who run the garden departments at least seem to grasp the fact that #1) if you don't water things every day, they die, and 2#) if you put shade plants in the sun, you fry them. And these days you don't even really need to be a gardener to know your shade plants, you don't even need to know how to read. You just need to have good enough color vision to tell a terra cotta colored gallon pot from a grey one. A dog could work that out.--M
Congrats on your bargain shopping! Don't you just love those abandoned perennials from HD and Lowe's all the more when you get them at such a great price!
Yes, I've had good luck dickering with the managers at Lowe's and HD for plants left on the shelf too long. Just had good luck yesterday buying 2 big buddleias for $1. each and some coneflowers for an extra good price. I think they have loads of stuff they'd like to move out right now because of the windstorm issues.
They say to get the broken bags of soil amendments to go on Mondays and Tuesdays after a busy weekend...